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Omnicharge

June 21st, 2017

The Omnicharge is the second “mains supply” battery backup that I have backed on kickstarter what seems years ago, and the second one to turn on in the last month

Heralded as far more advanced and adaptable compared to its competitors such as the ChargeTech Plug but it has a far lower output wattage (100Watt), so will it still be any use to me with my monster laptops?

—V The Omnicharge comes in a very nice compact box, minimal packing that survived the air trip perfectly.

The Omnicharge accessories match the amazing build quality of the main unit, with the adaptor tip being of especially high quality for some reason (not that im complaining)

One thing that bit me slightly is that if you are outside of the US you can’t order the accessories afterward so if you were dumb like me and did not order the DC cable or looked at the dirt magnet that is the case with its raised power button and realised a case is a mandatory requirement then poot to you.

When the Omnicharge arrived, I did not have a 90Watt power supply at hand, so I plugged my 130Watt in to see how it handled the extra load expecting a polite cut off message, but NOOOO, everything just worked, I glared at the info screen to see what was going on to discover that the giant power adaptor was ACTUALLY only drawing about 39Watts, let’s hear it for modern adaptive power supplies, this means I can use my P50 with the Omnicharge and my normal charger, sweet!!!, after a bit of experimentation, I found could make the Omnicharge peek at about 81 Watts (4 VM’s running, with me working in 1 of them) this is perfectly usable, I suppose I could have popped the limit if I have done something like video encoding, but that is not the goal.

—V The part of the Omincharge that sets it apart is that it will accept a very very wide range on its input charge, from USB solar panels up to monster power supplies (4.5V to 36V), if this circuit and it matching detailed control screen was built into actual laptops it would be a HUGE game changer but I will take it in any form at the moment.

—V The Omnicharge is only 20.4K mAh, about the size of my laptop battery, meaning it would only add about 2 hours to my battery life, then I had a realisation that I could charge the Omnicharge with the big Anka USB battery I normally carry at the same time it is providing power to the laptop, which should mean it should charge my laptop about 40% longer than it should on its own (on average my laptop takes about 40 Watts).

—V As you can see it works, but as you can also see the temp is rather on the high side, indeed its only 3 degrees short of the cut off temp with its little fan going for all its worth

conclusion The Omnicharge is truly a very smart bit of kit, by far the cleverest battery I have ever owned, again if a laptop provider incorporated this tech into their laptops it would be a massive game changer, but for the time being it is an essential bit of kit… just don’t forget to buy your accessories…